Social media controls the world

Europeans get new options from Apple, can get a copy of all the data they have collected.

What is really interesting, is that around 80 percent of what the business world is freaking out about, in Denmark at least, in GDPR, was already a law in Denmark. There was just absolutely no enforcement, and the maximum fine ever applied was 25000 kroner (Just above 4000 dollars). Now, the fines are 20 million euro, or 4 percent of your company’s turnover. THAT was a wake-up call for companies.

I do believe GDPR is a rather big stepping stone towards protection of our data - especially since its based on the individuals location, and NOT on the company. That means for instance, any personal data on THIS forum would be subject to GDPR if the person is a registrant of a EU country, like I am. My email adress I used to sign up with, if my real name is somewhere, its all personal data, and as such, the owners of this forum would be subject to the law. (Rest easy - right now associations, clubs and the like are exempt from the law - The Patron thing makes it a bit more questionable though, whether Qt3 is to be GDPR compliant - just a heads-up)

Now, this is just an example, but an interesting one, because it showcases that a LOT of companies have to take this seriously.

Just in case anyone wonder - the conerstone of GDPR is that its the individual that owns the right to its personal data (Which is anything that can identify the person -. name, adress, phone number, picture, genetic data, medical history and so on), and that individual has a right to expect anyone who handles their data to do so responsbily, and to allow the individual certain rights, one of which is rather big - The right to be informed. That means, that if a company registers ANY kind of data on the individual, it HAS to tell that individual that it does so, and under what legal option it does so. This is to be immediately as well.

The right to be revoke consent is another nice one, where you can ask about what data the company has on you, and you can ask them to delete it. If they don’t have any legally binding reason to keep the data, they have to delete it.

There is a ton of other stuff, but it is going to be a very interesting few years after may 25th this year.

The only thing surprising on the google front is the files that where deleted by the user but still in the archive. Sounds fishy. But everything else is common sense, isn’t it? Are people actually not understanding how Google works? I mean if I upload files and images to Google of course they know about it. The author seems bent on making Google look worse then Facebook.

The GDPR also considers pseudononimized values, such as you mobile device’s Identifier for Vendor and Advertising Identifier, to be personal data. That’s the huge game changer from the perspective of app developers because people now have to affirmatively consent to tracking for advertising purposes. All of the shady retargeting that happens in apps and on the web will be illegal as of mid-May. Prices paid for anonymous ads are significantly lower than for personalized ads, which will signifantly hurt the bottom line of people who rely on ads for income. Even for companies that consider personalized ads a “legitimate business interest” for non-consent tracking have to provide a way to opt out.

Second to that are the costs associated with fielding Right to Erasure and Data Portability requests. The costs there mount up quickly. Because of this, where I work, we’ve decided not to gather gameplay analytics for people in the EEA at all.

Also, Turkey just passed a very similar law. Israel, Canada, Brazil, South Korea, and some other countries have similar laws with lower monetary fines for non-compliance.

Aye, tell me about it - I have 26 pages of just descriptions of what KIND of personal data we have in the company where I work - Thats part one of the new law, documenting everything - its healthy in the long run of course, but man, its a big project if you are starting from scratch. We’ve also changed quite a bit how our workflow works, where and how we store data - Its poised in every way to be the gamechanger we need for privacy reasons, but time will tell.

I think you’re underestimating the common person’s knowledge of how the internet and tech companies make money.

Facebook: Connecting people is good - even if they end up killing each other.

Of course, that’s just my flip and facile summary. What they actually said is … no, wait, that’s what they actually said.

He totally didn’t mean it, though, he was just trying to spark discussion!

Honestly, though, I can’t bring out the torch for this one. People are going to die from automobiles, that doesn’t mean Ford should shut down their factories. He has somewhat of a point, but it was worded in the slimiest way possible.

The full text of the memo is something.

The Ugly

We talk about the good and the bad of our work often. I want to talk about the ugly.

We connect people.

That can be good if they make it positive. Maybe someone finds love. Maybe it even saves the life of someone on the brink of suicide.

So we connect more people

That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools.

And still we connect people.

The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is de facto good. It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned.

That isn’t something we are doing for ourselves. Or for our stock price (ha!). It is literally just what we do. We connect people. Period.

That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it.

The natural state of the world is not connected. It is not unified. It is fragmented by borders, languages, and increasingly by different products. The best products don’t win. The ones everyone use win.

I know a lot of people don’t want to hear this. Most of us have the luxury of working in the warm glow of building products consumers love. But make no mistake, growth tactics are how we got here. If you joined the company because it is doing great work, that’s why we get to do that great work. We do have great products but we still wouldn’t be half our size without pushing the envelope on growth. Nothing makes Facebook as valuable as having your friends on it, and no product decisions have gotten as many friends on as the ones made in growth. Not photo tagging. Not news feed. Not messenger. Nothing.

In almost all of our work, we have to answer hard questions about what we believe. We have to justify the metrics and make sure they aren’t losing out on a bigger picture. But connecting people. That’s our imperative. Because that’s what we do. We connect people.

That argument applies to an ISP, not Facebook. Facebook is (supposedly) a walled garden.

A better analogy would be if Disneyland were to say, “Yeah, we know people are gonna run each other over on the Autopia ride. But it’s our job to pump as many people through that ride per hour, not keep people safe.”

Sure, deeply all right. In other words, “It doesn’t matter if people die if we make money lolololol.”

Disneyland exists solely as a product of entertainment. Automobiles provide benefits that need to be weighed against the thousands and thousands of deaths they cause, whether through accidents or intentional killing. His POV is that connectedness is overall a good goal, even if people misuse the platform.

His statement is one I don’t agree with, but his position was a little more nuanced than what the headlines were portraying.

The “Guns don’t kill people” argument, but with Facebook.

I think his argument as stated seems fine - at best, to reject it is to accept a degree of necessary paternalism in the world. The counter-argument, that it’s better to not connect people, carries such a baggage-train of unspoken assumptions in an increasingly globalizing world it would too laborious to unpack each and every one.

But that isn’t what Facebook does. It doesn’t just connect, it curates. And it’s that curation that is part of the problem.

Facebook doesn’t “do” anything but allow disinformation to pass through their software. Why, they must think, do we have to be held responsible for that? I’m sure they feel like they’re being blamed for spam email.

The difference between Facebook and the decades long disinformation establishment of talk radio, Rupert Murdoch and their ilk that have ruined an entire generation is that, like a good Silicon Valley startup, they reject politics. In fact they kind of hate politics and governance; but then they immediately toe the line to whatever China demands, since the Chinese government can with a flick of the finger ban them from their marketplace. Maybe they convince themselves they’re still doing the lord’s work there. The problem with companies like Facebook is that they eagerly become willing patsies in the destruction of democracy, in the name of freedom.

Because they reject and dislike politics and political systems (like so much of that industry) their neither really comprehend nor care about the effects they have on political systems. Journalism called itself “The Fourth Estate”. Companies like Facebook seem to reject the whole concept of social responsibility because they have no concept of society, just a transnational blob of individuals connected however ephemerally with each other through mutual interests.

I like how Scott Galloway has basically morphed from market analyst into the canary in the coal mine.

This is quite literally Facebook in a nutshell

Is there a way to “undo” this? I may have been too lax and done this in the past a few times.

That’s a straw man counterargument that no one would ever seriously advance, though.

The reasonable and unaddressed counter-argument is, “Connecting people is sometimes good, sometimes bad. We should make a serious effort to do the good things and not do the bad because we are responsible human beings with moral responsibilities to other people, and not just robots in some bad 1950s science fiction story who are programmed with one and only one directive that we must blindly obey no matter how disastrous the results.”

(I’m violently agreeing with your conclusions, by the way - that Facebook and their ilk neither grasp nor care about their impact on overall society. I’m just disagreeing with your initial notion that his argument starts out OK.)

The argument is not connect or not

it’s: if we create a new global community to connect everyone on the planet, do we make money by asking people to pay to use it, or by selling their attention to anyone who will pay.

This recent XKCD seems relevant to this thread.

Well, this is fun.